Smoke and Ashes

Jennifer Palmer has read crime fiction since her teenage years & enjoys reviewing within the many sub-genres that now exist; as a historian who lectures on real life historical mysteries she particularly appreciates historical cime fiction.

Harvill Secker

RRP: £12.99

Released: June 7 2018

HBK

Another magnificent tale from Abir Mukherjee continues the adventures of Sam Wyndham, policeman in Calcutta in 1921; it commences with a disfigured Chinese corpse found in an opium den and expands to a plot threatening the life of a distinguished visitor and the lives of many Britons and Indians.

Sam Wyndham is in a serious jam as this book opens. The police in Calcutta are hunting for people in an opium den and Sam must make an escape on to the roof. His discovery of a body is a shocking by-product of his journey through the building. Sam is not a member of the Vice squad but he is a policeman so he is shocked when the body he saw is apparently spirited away and no further investigation is made. He suspects the involvement of Section H an intelligence branch of the police.

Sam has been the protagonist in two previous adventures in an India of the 1920s where British rule is becoming increasingly onerous for the Indians. He continues to fight the demons unleashed by his WW1 experiences in this book as in the previous ones. It is December 1921 just before Christmas and the British authorities are faced by Gandhi’s campaign of non-violence. Wyndham’s assistant, a sergeant known as Surrender-not, is in the invidious position of serving in the police force while his family are supporting the Indian independence movement. Sam is an unusual Englishman for that time in that he shares lodgings with his sergeant and has more sympathy towards Indians than many of his confreres. His drug addiction and his antagonism towards the secret police branch of the police make his life difficult.

Gradually he discovers the connection between the earlier death and other murders that follow. More seriously the deaths connect with a major threat to public safety during the visit of an important man from England. The thrills of this story certainly keep the reader enthusiastically turning the pages. The history behind the British rule in India in 1921 has been thoroughly studied by Abir and he uses his knowledge lightly to present a fascinating picture. Sam succeeds, despite the odds against him, in elucidating the mystery.